


Bed, Bathroom, and Beyond

by AriSilverAg



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-09-30 12:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17224484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriSilverAg/pseuds/AriSilverAg
Summary: Adam gets saved from the bathroom. There's hope that he and his co-survivor, Dr Lawrence Gordon, are able to find the way to progress beyond their meeting with the Jigsaw Killer.





	1. Endings and Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Hey.  
> I obviously don't own Saw, nor the characters referenced within this particular fanfiction. This honestly started in my head as the idea of trying to think about how Adam would feel about being left in the bathroom and nothing happening for a couple of days.  
> Also, because I'm Australian, I'll be using Australian-English, even in dialogue, but unless otherwise stated, all characters are intended to be American, I just don't particularly want to try to write in American-English and miss some words.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam, lost to the world in the bathroom, feels like he hears sounds outside the door. But that felt less possible with every moment.

Adam felt rather destroyed considering he was left in a situation where his only key to freedom was taken away as he woke, by his own foot. Now he just couldn’t bring himself to go to sleep, lest he die in his chilly slumber.

Maybe he _had_ been passive in his life. And let the world pass him by, barely noticing things that others did. In a sense, he felt like being left in the dark gave him nothing but diminishing hope that his room-companion would come back to save him. How did he even know he was still alive? He _didn’t_.

He had to survive. He was going to make it out alive. This wasn’t going to be the end. He wasn’t going to die soon. Death was not going to come sooner rather than later. He was going to get out of here, because someone would save him.

Adam thought he heard rustling at the end of the corridor, the rusty pipes? Probably water movement. Taking the key out of this place further away. It was about halfway to the local sewage treatment centre. Somewhere far away from anyone who’d be able to find it before he likely passed out and died from dehydration. He couldn’t tell if his lungs were on fire or if the absence of smoke was settling in and he needed more to satisfy that drive.

The rustling got louder to the point Adam couldn’t pass it off as the plumbing of the abandoned industrial bathroom that surrounded him. He could have ran a bath for himself (the water was still connected) but what was the point of dying clean in this disgusting shithole.

He didn’t know if the taps were safe to drink from. He didn’t want to try until he couldn’t take it any longer. If he waited, then he knew he’d be dying either way, so anything in those pipes that could’ve killed him wouldn’t rob him of hours he could’ve been saved. He didn’t know how long he’d been here or what dehydration past most of a day on a photography binge felt like, but this was definitely it.

He felt the blood from the body of the orderly on his right. It had gone dry now. Every second he was awake he was reaching his final moments on this planet, unless by some miracle, the Doctor had managed to get out of here and get to his family. He’d checked his pockets hundreds of times. The body had nothing on it other than the tape recorder. No clean, purified water, that could have given him even a day or two more of hope that somebody out there found him. But nobody ever noticed him, except his landlord if he couldn’t afford to pay rent on its due date. That’s what made him good at what got him in these fucking chains. It was too late to repent meaningfully, unless he was found. Too late to have learnt.

Now it was too early to die. He didn’t know how much time the fire within his lungs would keep going until he got engulfed in the flames. The smell of poisoned blood around him possibly sent him into an increasingly delirious spiral as he laid there, passively breathing it in. A lack of nicotine made him feel off balance too. He felt his body shaking, waiting for another dosage of backlogged cancer that may hit him in thirty-something years time. If he lived until then.

The rustling got louder.

He couldn’t have found himself in three days even if he was reported missing. This was none of the usual places. And realistically, three days was all he had, from the time he was invaded in the privacy of his own home. Two and a half since the light was slammed out. Was he only in the light for eight hours in this shithole? He must have spent more time than that with Lawrence trying to figure the way out and run over every aspect of how they could’ve gotten here.

He thought he heard someone open the door. He didn’t know what he was experiencing, though. Wishful thinking? The end of life? The question of whether this person was trustworthy battled his mind as the door slid open with an all-too-familiar grind. It was loud enough for him to watch the door, knowing someone was there. What else could he do to get help after this? Cut his fucking foot off with a shard of glass? He didn’t have the strength to do that and survive.

He noticed there were a couple of people watching him from behind the door. As he watched them curiously, he saw their hands reaching for the light switch. He squinted and held his hands over his eyes as the lights switched back on one by one, making a brief clicking sound as each of the lights took their turn to fill the room again. He stayed still on the tiled floor, the drying blood from the corpse’s brain surrounding him. He was hoping the Doctor would come back.

“Adam?” someone said. It didn’t sound like the Doctor, not really.

He couldn’t focus enough to determine anything about the person he heard. Whether it was someone he could trust, just that it was anyone at all. It was the first time he heard a voice in what felt like several eternities. He was, thus, convinced they were worthy of listening to. He heard whirring in the background, electronic, maybe. “Someone call Detective Kerry, we’ve got a live one.”

Adam coughed a couple of times, the fire he was feeling causing his lungs to want to give up. Like he’s gotten to the point where he knew he was safe. Now he needed to rest again.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he’d been in someone else’s company. Now that someone else was there, with him, he realised that it was possible to speak out again, and get an answer, even if he felt his eyes dropping closed.

“Lawrence?” he asked, his voice parched and his vocal chords sticky and hoarse. Had it really been that long since he last screamed out?

“He sent for you. Gave us your location,” they said, “You’re safe with us now.”

Adam’s breathing changed. It was less shallow. He wasn’t inhaling to survive now. The air suddenly smelt like life again. He was starting to focus on the person above him, who seemed intent to not remove anything but him from the scene. Leaving Zep. Leaving Lawrence’s foot. Taking only Adam and his chain.

He breathed out as he started to calculate was happening around him. Someone had really come to save him. Lawrence was okay.

“His family?”

“Both are physically fine.” That was how he felt too. Physically, he would be fine once he drank water, except for the bullet wound.

He could hear the whirring of an electrical tool, somewhere near the pipe that he was chained to. Someone getting him out of where he was stuck. Someone cutting through the chains and not his feet.

And then it suddenly stopped. He almost felt like he was floating through the air, and leaving the bathroom behind. That there was a feeling of transcending that he wasn’t able to experience for many years. That all came to a stop the moment he came out of the shithole, and he was on what felt like a hospital stretcher.

As he wheeled through the hallway maze, as it seemed, he could see where Lawrence’s blood. Someone must have found him and helped him through the rest. He saw what looked like a shadow of his ex-girlfriend in one spot that was covered in darkness, watching attentively until he turned a corner.

It didn’t take as long as he expected to get out of there, but when he felt outside for the first time in at least a day, even the dim twilight and mild winds on his skin felt borderline fictional. He had to take a moment to savour the beautiful colours and the beauty of the pavement.

Although it was taken away soon after, as he was wheeled into the back of the ambulance van. It was too bright for his eyes at the moment, but he didn’t want to close his eyes. He lifted one of his arms over his eyes.

“Water?” he asked.

Someone opened his mouth slightly and placed a straw between his lips. He clenched down and sucked a little, until he felt water splashing over his mouth. Usually water tasted like dirt and rust because his apartment’s tap water was tainted with shit from the pipes. This water tasted beautiful and clean.

“What’s your name?” the nurse asked.

“Adam Tyler Stanheight,” he barely whispered.

“What year is it?”

“2004.”

“Who’s president?”

“George Bush Jr.”

“Who’s your next of kin?”

“My Mum. Caroline.”

Silence for a few seconds, as the Nurse tried to get his name down. He asked for her number, and he said it out loud, slowly.

“We’ll get you to the hospital as soon as we can. We’ll be there in ten minutes. We need you to stay awake until then. We’ll call her once you get there.” Adam felt like that was almost impossible. Another ten minutes on top of what had felt like the eternity that he’d spent in the bathroom felt borderline impossible.

But ten minutes was short, in comparison to the rest of his life.


	2. Hospital Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam deals with the realities of waking up in hospital after The Bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I completely forgot to update this, even if I had the first draft of this sitting around for a couple of months before I edited it. Hopefully I'll update again sooner than May.

Adam sat up almost instantly as his eyes opened to the bright hospital lights. The lights shone down on him and felt painful in his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure how long he’d spent here, whether it was a few hours or a few days, He hated the way that he felt like he was stuck against the bedsheets. Patches of red rested against where his stitches were.

He didn’t think anyone’d come in to see him. His mother couldn’t get here. He didn’t know the reasons why, but he knew that was the reality he’d have to deal with. She wasn’t going to come no matter how dead he was. She had her reasons, and he had his reasons for feeling apathy towards her decision.

He felt the breathing tube down his throat and he almost coughed it out. Intensive Care sucked, because he knew that, everyone knew that.

“Mr Stanheight?” the first nurse asked, almost vaguely shocked by the fact that he was awake. Everybody but his doctor seemed to address him that way. He didn’t care. He was alive. His doctor wanted him to stay here for a few days. He was a freelancer without the appropriate health care to afford that. And maybe it was okay that he was going to be alive. But also, how much debt that he may not have been able to pay back was he about to be put under.

It made him want to throw up.

He felt something starting to make its way up through his throat. He tried to cough it up but it felt like it was stuck there. The little whatever he had stuck halfway between his mouth and his lungs, or stomach. He pulled himself up over the bedrail, nearly screaming out in pain as a response what he could only assume was his stitched-up wound. That wince of pain gave him another push to try to cough whatever it was up.

He was here, now, but he didn’t know how long he’d be in here. He sure as fuck wasn’t covered for anything as long as he’d probably already been here, and sure as fuck wasn’t going to be covered if he had to get further treatment. But at least he was alive.

He just wanted to talk about the amount that he’d have to pay to stay alive in this place, and how soon they’d kick him out because he couldn’t afford that. He was almost better off dying.

Lawrence. He needed to talk through with all of this with Gordon to make sure everything was going to be okay. He wasn’t sure why the doctor was going to be the stable one in this situation. His family could’ve been dead. Lawrence had to be out there, somewhere, didn’t he?

He didn’t realise that, until someone pulled the curtain next to him back. He realised that the Doctor was in the bed next to him likely the whole time he’d been in here. Lawrence was asleep, and there were people that looked like his wife and daughter. They’ve got the same coloured hair, the same look of waking up after everything they’d been through as he felt like he was projecting right now. The beeps of the monitors mixed with the bleach undertones of the hospital floors felt a little bit safer than the environment he was rescured from. And in that moment he felt safer than he had in years. He felt just that little bit more secure since Lawrence looked at him and shared a not-quite smile.

Adam turned his head back to face the ceiling.

He wasn’t going to have his family come here, unlike Lawrence.

Adam barely had anyone in this life, and he had gotten used to that. He wasn’t sure if his family had even tried to reach out recently, but he wondered if his face got out on the news would they come, would they show up.

It wasn’t a wonder that he kept fading in and out of consciousness, if nobody was going to come here. He had nothing to do, nobody would bring him anything to do. When he woke up in the middle of the night, he nearly tumbled he way into the seating chair next to his bed.

As he sat down, the darkness started to consume him. He tried to move his ankle, but he was stuck to the chair, no, chained to the chair. He fell to the ground, and something almost felt a little bit out of place. He thought that he heard someone screaming out his name. “Adam?” the void seemed to shout to him. There was someone there who must have been speaking to him. He felt a slight bit like he had to follow the voice, but he couldn’t move forwards, he was stuck there. But someone was out there, saying his name, no, screaming out his name as if he should have been trying to make his way there.

“Hello?”

He blinked a couple of times and he felt the hospital bed by his shoulders. He curled up on the floor, trying to ignore the very realities of where he was. He felt wet, like he’d been underwater, he had woken up underwater once. Every inch of skin felt as though he’d just been dunked underwater.

He heard someone come in through the door. “Mr Stanheight? Adam?”

He closed his eyes snice it felt as though what reality was and where he was were two separate places. And he didn’t want to believe if he hadn’t gotten out.

He felt someone’s hand reach his eyes. “Doctor!” someone shouted as Adam slowly started to open his eyes. He couldn’t quite tell what was going on around him, anymore, but he knew that someone, somewhere, had to have seen him through this moment. Had he really been where he’d thought he was in his head? He didn’t know if he wanted to explain what had happened to anyone, why he’d got out of his bed and why he was now on the floor. It was enough of a shame that reporters had supposedly tried to get in to interview him about the killer that he could barely remember, who he only really saw for a minute. One whole minute. And the detectives, he was barely able to remain awake and it was like they all wanted to hear every single word he could say.

Something he couldn’t explain was the feeling of being trapped by the ankle in a bathroom less sterile than the mess he’d had to clean up in his apartment when he moved in. It was worse after the viewing. But it was all that he could afford and even that was in danger the more that he stuck around.

He’d hoped that one morning he would wake up and all of the negative feelings he harboured would go away, that he’d finally land something secure enough to feel comfortable, to move somewhere better. Maybe when his twenties finished he’d open up his eyes and realise it.

He felt like he was living outside of his own body at this moment. Like he was being torn from his body, but instead of feeling pain he just felt like he was three metres away from the scene around him. He could see the doctor approaching him and even if he opened his eyes, he still felt a pang of disconnect between him and where he felt he was. Someone’s hand touched him on the side of the shoulder. “Adam?” he heard a voice ask.

He knew that someone had to be there, looking out for him, but it felt like he was alone. “I’m going to help you back up, on the count of three I’m going to start helping you get back into your hospital bed.” He felt someone try to lift him up to a standing position.

He wanted to forget everything that he had been through, but part of him was unable to shake the familiar feeling that some things you just can’t forget. That was the reality of where he was.


	3. Gordon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry about the lack of updates. This is kind of a passion project of mine rather than one I've committed to writing on a large scale, so I'm not committing to a schedule as of now, but hopefully I'll update more often than once a season in the near future!

Adam had hoped he’d be out of the hospital in a few days, rather than the news that he was likely to be required to stay for a couple of weeks (preliminarily, according to the doctor assigned to him) in the same room as the person who almost ended his life. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was here. Another part of him could believe it, but the duality of these beliefs was something that he couldn’t understand in congruence.

He still hadn’t seen Caroline. There was no hope about the man that tried every now and then to call himself his father showing up. Why would he, especially considering there was nothing that he would have left behind if he did indeed pass away. Adam tried to reach out but it’s hard to reach out when the only thing that’s there is falling sand that runs through his hands.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone other than his nurse or his doctor in a while. Could’ve just been all of the people he had around him but he couldn’t imagine any of the people he hung around trying to find him when he was missing.

But then it was when a different doctor started speaking to him that he felt a like someone might have been there and understood how he felt, even if there was no evidence that said doctor was alone.

“I’m glad they found you,” Lawrence said.

Adam wasn’t sure what kind of response he could muster. It took him a few moments to process it, someone talking to him almost felt unreal at this point. Someone who was treating him vaguely like a human and not just another patient.

“I’m glad to be alive.”

The definition of alive was something that seemed to allude him, until now. He felt more like he was barely alive, barely breathing, but now he couldn’t stop thinking about why he was alive.

Every night, he woke up in his shackles underwater gasping for air. And the thing is that every night the scenario would play out subtly different. The last couple of nights Lawrence shot him a lot sooner than he did. May have almost killed him too. One time he did, and the guy got up off the floor, dusted himself off, and gave Lawrence a key to get out of his shackle and promised to take him back to his family.

And there was something in the way that Lawrence’s role changed in these what-ifs. How his character shifted enough to cause him a massive headache. “Thanks for not killing me,” Adam said.

“If you didn’t move around the place you would be dead.” Somehow his voice sounded sure of that. “But the bullet missed both your heart and most of your left lung.”

There was something in the way that the pair of them interacted that seemed to feel empty. Now that his survival wasn’t playing around a twisted game, Adam meant nothing. He was used to the feeling. He wasn’t worth much to the people that left him behind. Maybe that’s why he stuck to the shadows for so long. Hid himself from the world. So that the only person who could betray him was himself. He didn’t want to feel as though he had to present himself to the world at any given point, but maybe he was pissing life down the drain. But he hadn’t had something to hold on for, and he wasn’t exactly prime material for keeping himself in check too.

“So then lucky I’ve got a great jump, right?”

There was something in the way that the Doctor’s glance changed into a smile that made Adam feel nervous inside. But the thing was that they didn’t just merely have to survive now. Their interdependence on each other had crumbled in a way that should have been evident by the way that both of them seemed to have had nothing to say to one another now that they were both alive and free.

“You’re more lucky that I was shaking around too.”

“Thanks. For getting me out of there. I’d almost given up hope.”

Gordon breathed out. The pair of them were facing each other while laying on their hospital beds. A couple of weeks here, together, to recover. He wondered at what point the cops would want to ask him what went down in that bathroom, and he wondered if they were even desperate to hear what he knew. That he knew the face of the killer. But not the whereabouts, not a name, not anything that could’ve really helped them beyond average bald 50s white male. By the time they might take a statement might have hair again, so the point would be rendered mute.

The morning news show seemed to be playing in the background. Wednesday morning. He definitely had a Wednesday before this ordeal, but he didn’t know if it was the morning he was kidnapped, or if it was the day before.

“I didn’t know if they’d find you in time.” He seemed to lower his voice significantly. “They told me that I almost died by the time I was found. Apparently someone found me on the side of the road and took me straight here.”

Adam breathed out as he heard those words. “Do you remember that?”

“Not any more than a blur of that. Someone in his late 30s and some lanky woman in her late 20s, maybe? I’m not even sure if I have the ages correct.”

“What, do you think that ma—” maybe it was Jigsaw.

Gordon shook his head. He sat up, making Adam feel slightly on edge about the situation at hand, about if Lawrence may have known anything that he wasn’t leading on. And then the pair of them stopped speaking to each other for a few solid minutes.

“So what have you got waiting for you outside of this hospital?” Lawrence asked, breaking the silence like a nail into glass. He had nothing, didn’t he. But he wasn’t going to let on to the Doctor that he still didn’t think his life was meaningless.

“Probably a good canister of film, a forest or two, and some alone time to figure out who I am.”

He felt so out of touch with himself now, because of what happened. And maybe there was a voice in his head that was starting to let him know how lost he always had felt, and that lost was his genuine normal. But he hated that it took some sick fuck to nearly take his life away for him to start to recognise the empty shell his life had become. And he didn’t want to feel like this realisation was coming, just that it was triggered in a way that he couldn’t control.

“Have you lost yourself along the way?” Gordon asked.

“I think I lost myself years ago, and hadn’t realised. How about you, have you lost who you are at any point?”

“After med school I fell out of contact with the reasons why I found myself in the profession to begin with.”

There was something in the way that he heard Gordon’s voice deepen that felt like he was covering for something, sounding like the story he was feeding Adam wasn’t the true moment that he lost who he was, but Adam had nothing else to go off except a difference in tone and a small inkling. “So what did you do about it, Gordon?”

“I worked through it. I gave myself enough time to understand who I was, and who I wanted to be.” And it felt almost like Lawrence was parroting back a story that he didn’t believe in. But Adam wondered if that wasn’t the point.

Was he trying to help? Maybe. But then Adam didn’t know how or why Lawrence would be there trying to spout back the advice that Adam knew he needed to hear. “And I just didn’t give a fuck who said what or wanted me to do things. I worked towards what I wanted to be in my heart…”

There was something in the way that he was talking, candidly, that somehow felt discordant. That there was something deeper that he couldn’t discern.

* * *

 

It had to be Thursday night. One week after he woke up in the bathtub. That was when he met the first detective. Privately.

His stitches had been removed. He was told he’d been in here for a week so far. But he was deemed lucid enough to finally talk at length. He felt borderline sick, every step that he took felt like he was going to trip over. One of the nurses walked him to the private meeting room.

He held his hands together, under his chin, trying to get himself to hold his head up. It had been ten days since his last substantial meal (he didn’t eat much) but he’d been slowly eating again. Soft foods, something it would be safe for his body bring back up, according to the doctor. The more he stayed in here, however, the longer he knew that he was fucked when he got out of here.

Two detectives were there in the room, one tough looking man, and a pretty empathetic looking woman.

“So you and your friend got out of there, didn’t you?” He breathed out as he heard those words, and he started to give a weak nod. “And when you got out you…”

“I was found by a paramedics team, I don’t know when, I don’t know how but I think Doctor Gordon sent the area or gave them enough of an idea of what he saw when he got out to—”

“Only what you know, Adam. About where you were. About why you were taken. From the beginning.”

“What the cold hard facts? I can tell you that I was developing some photos in my apartment’s shitty darkroom when the power cut. Someone could’ve cut my power, broke into my apartment, and waited for me in my linen closet. I woke up in a rusted, depleted bathroom, chained by metal to the pipes, Couldn’t get away from there. Was given a hacksaw to get out. There was a clean clock on the wall, someone wanted to us to know the time.”

He breathed out, it was weird, feeling like he was commenting about it outside of himself, except that yes, he did indeed go through what he remembered.

“Woke up, opposite the doctor. Was a body on the floor, seemed to be fairly badly bloodied up. Suicide, I could assume. Gunshot wound to the head, gun in his left hand, micro tape player in the right. Got a tape, it should’ve still been there on the scene, if you guys have investigated. Bunch of photos I took of Lawrence too.” He breathed out. “And it was some old detective. Must’ve gotten fired for getting obsessed on this case. Thought Lawrence was… was Jigsaw.”

The investigator seemed to lean forward. “And the dead body on the ground, the one next to me, for the longest time we also thought that he was Jigsaw, but no, that was some hospital orderly just like us… ” He looked the detective in the eyes. “He was just trying to survive too. He tried to kill Lawrence and I rushed him in self defence since that was the only way I thought I was going to get out.”

The detective seemed to be unimpressed with what he said. Not just unimpressed, almost borderline angry at him for saying it. And that somehow didn’t sit right with him.

He watched the detective, attempting to desemble anything that he might be feeling, but there’s nothing in the way that the detective is looking angrily that is giving him any hope. “But the body on the floor in between where Gordon was and where I was that got up and shut the door and told me that the key to my chains was in the bathtub that I’d woken up in, but it must’ve went down the drain when I pulled the plug out as I woke up…”

He tried to keep a calm face but he was breathing in and out to the point that he felt like he wasn’t able to breathe. He almost collapsed on the spot, but he felt the detective holding him back. He placed a plastic cup of water down in front of Adam. It was going to take a long time to get through this.

“And then I was found. And that’s all I know for sure…”

“I’d love to get your full statement, Adam. But I don’t think you’re ready to give it,” the detective with curly hair said, “But if you can think of anything out of the ordinary that you remember, tell us.”

“The body in the middle of the floor was in his early to mid 50s, very little hair, Small ears. Really big nose. Blue eyes…. But… that’s it. His head was covered in fake blood so I don’t know if I’d be able to point him correctly out of a line up but… I hope it helps.”

And the tough guy detective’s eyes almost light up just a little. “Thank you for your time, Anthony.”

“It’s Adam…”

“Sorry for his mistake,” the woman interjects.


End file.
